A Lot of Wet, Some Little Wins

3 walks, which I for one enjoyed a lot more as, while the ground was plenty soggy, it wasn't raining as it was on Tuesday.

Another item to cross off the list of "he'll never do that": Charlie does a fine job using the crosswalk (as insisted upon by the crossing guard who he, as you can see, dwarfs). He does equally well crossing the street after looking both ways for cars. He tends to err on the side of caution—waiting even if a car is far away enough that he could make it if he hurried—obviously I'd much rather Charlie err this way than not.

Further progress on the helmet front: Charlie's not wearing it after 11.30am at school.

A Care2.com post (which has yet to be published as of my writing this post) on a new study about autism signs appearing in the first year of a baby's life, but parents (even parents who already have a child on the spectrum) not noting these signs. The really special thing about this post is: Most of it was written on my iPhone because Charlie was hogging using my laptop.

Charlie not falling asleep until 11pm, something that hasn't happened in a while. There's another big ol' snowstorm predicted to hit the northeast imminently. It was certainly on the warmish side on those 3 walks and I'm suspecting Charlie sensed the storm-to-come.

Speaking of storms, I am suspecting that all the snow and rain here had something to do with the two leaks in the ceiling in my classroom this morning. One leak, at the back corner of the room, is connected with a rather largish hole in the ceiling; the desk beneath it has been soaked through for at least the past week plus. The other leak was new and smack in the center of the room, and seemed to be causing a ceiling panel (at the front of which a projector was mounted) to bulge rather alarmingly, from the perspective of the students (arrayed around the edges of the room, to stay dry) and myself. I dragged a recycle bin under the drip-stream, called maintenance, and wrote gutta—Latin for "drop"—on the board and then, multae guttae, "many drops." One student (she usually sits towards the center of the room, and would have been directly, um, "hit" by the falling water) asked me how, in the midst of all this (going over Latin pronouns while watching water drip from on high right in front of your students is not the most ideal of learning environments) I was still able to smile and try to make light of things.

Acknowledging that things weren't looking too good in our classroom, I said something about having been through a lotta stuff of a challenging nature and that if I didn't keep my sense of humor and shake off worries of imminent doom and disaster…….

But the best (from my mom-perspective) for the last: There being a lot of puddles and wet outside (as well as inside, at least in some spots), Charlie's been getting his black shoes pretty soaked. (Pointing out puddles can be more of an invitation for him to walk into them.) He's been all right walking with wet shoes and socks. As of yesterday, he started clutching the front of his pants above the knees and pulling them up, the better to keep the bottoms dry. Sometimes he pulled them up so high, his pants were capri, culotte, gaucho, or board short length. And to see him not having to endure the whole walk with sloppy, muddy hems, thanks to his own figuring out what to do:

Joe said, “We’ll have a virtual fiesta for that.”
No kidding – Kristina, when you mentioned the fade on that, I got a little thrill – it’s progressing! The helmet is fading! Wonderful!
All the other things sound wonderful, too. Good on Charlie, and good on you. Yeah, it’s interesting how when you have practice in turning lemons into lemonade on a longterm basis, things like water from the ceiling seem like something to deal with, but less than a total panic situation. (But stay away from those electrical devices and water – ‘don’t want to lose one of my favorite bloggers.)
Take care.

Making it through a slush-snow day here—one likely tomorrow—-at this rate I think, whenever we get back to classes at my college, there’ll be yellow tape and “DANGER OFF LIMITS” over the door of my classroom!